Yet again, I wish for a more nuanced review option from Steam than a mere "thumbs up" or "thumbs down"... I'll ultimately err on the positive mostly because it is not a bad game for what it sets out to do, it's just lacking in much ambition.

Tears Revolude is a Japanese-made mobile game ported over to Steam. It can be played entirely with the mouse using only the left button (right button does nothing "cancel" involves hitting a "back" button), using the keyboard, or a gamepad.

The game has four difficulty modes, and since, in a game like this, that basically is asking "how much do you want to grind", I picked the "Normal" mode. I shouldn't have bothered, however, as you need to grind a bit, anyway, to level up your skills, which gain levels through a set number of uses, regardless of what they are used upon. Hence, you gain better healing spells by having the healer drop heals regardless of actually having taken damage, and hover around the healing points or edge of the map. The game suggests I reforge my weapon levels every 10 character levels, but there's literally nothing better to spend your money upon, so I wound up reforging every time I came back to town, and being even more massively overpowered every trip.

Dungeons are basically just unadorned hallways. Fights are represented by purple clouds you walk into, and because most passages are so narrow, they're basically unavoidable. There are treasures that disappear after being opened, which also appear on the map. Dungeons are generally rather short and far from complicated, at least so far as I've gotten into the game, but you also have very little MP. (Granted, MP restoration items are also cheap, though...)

On Normal Mode in the early game, your characters will take about 60 damage (100 on a crit) from enemies while having several hundred to a thousand HP, and then bosses will suddenly be dealing ten times that, while having a hundred times the HP. (There is no "defense" stat, you have to equip physical/magical damage % reduction gems to reduce damage.) There are health restoration points (basically like save points, but you can save anywhere, anyway,) right before every boss.

This doesn't make the bosses hard, however, as there's also a special ("Limit Break") system. If you make a character who has an offensive special use this with everyone else joining in, you are asked to connect the dots as quickly as possible to increase damage... or just use a gamepad and spin the stick to gain power five times faster, since there's no penalty for a wrong imput, and you just need to tilt the stick in a direction corresponding to one of the arrows. Doing this super-charges the special such that you deal roughly 50 times as much damage as your skills, and insta-gib bosses.

Equipment consists of a weapon, two accessories, and multiple "gem" slots, the last of which you have to pay to unlock over the course of the adventure. The "four weapon types" are basically a way to alter what stats your weapon focuses upon, so the main character (who is a mixed physical/magic character) can have the standard sword; the more physical attack, less magical attack sword; the more magic attack, less physical attack sword; and a more HP/MP, less attack sword. Swapping out is free, but this basically just amounts to asking whether you want a specialized or generalized character, and it rarely makes a huge difference.

Gems can give things like simple +10 ATK, or give multiple benefits like regneration plus +200 HP plus bonus ATK while in critical health, all fitting into a single gem slot. Obviously, this makes the gems that have tons of benefits far more valuable and desirable, and the bait used as rewards for the mini-quests or bonus dungeons.

The game also features a "TRP" or *sigh* "Tears Revolude Points", which are gained per 5 fights (regardless of relative power of the enemies) or from accomplishing certain (in-game only) achievements. These points are shared across saves, but spent in specific save files. These seem like they may have been how microtransactions were shoehorned in, but they just replaced it with a "fight more to get more points" system. In the world map, these points can be spent in a shop to get things like more money or some of the better gems.

The story is also nothing to really write home about.

You play as a guy named Sion who's in a cave that they call a "hidden lab" for unexplained reasons, looking for... something unexplained from some famous artist. He's accompanied by a woman who dresses in nothing but a leather bustier and thong that fights with a whip for unexplained reasons. (I mean the reason why she's in the party is never explained, not the reason why a woman who wears nothing but leather enjoys hanging out in dungeons and whipping people... I mean, they don't explain that either, but I figure her motivations for that one are pretty self-explanatory.) Instead of finding whatever it was they were looking for that clearly wasn't important if they're willing to totally forget it as soon as the plot starts, they find a deadpan snarker girl who's pretty much the only character who breathes any kind of interesting dialogue into the whole game.

You then proceed to go to more dungeons that are supposed "labs" of this artist, only to find out the evil... "The Guild"... by which they mean "The Empire", wants this mysterious humanoid MacGuffin with no memories. We're informed of their villainy primarily through their fashion choices, since they seem to get their outfits from the same catalgues as 80's anime "evil empress of the moon" characters.

The heroes, after defeating some of The Empi- The Guild's top captains handily decides they need help for some reason, and so turns to the resistance movement against The Guild, called... "The Resistance". Yeah, they stayed up late thinking of these names...

What mysterious secrets does the humanoid MacGuffin who seems to maybe not be human after all hold? There couldn't possibly be some doomsday secret where only the mysterious waif the main character rescues in the first ten minutes turns out to be able to decide the fate of the world, could there? I won't spoil the ending because I haven't finished it, anyway, but the game is not exactly A-game storytelling, as you can probably tell. It's pretty paint-by-numbers JRPG fare...

So, why do I recommend it, anyway? Well, sometimes you just enjoy something mindless and comfortable. I got this game in a bundle deal, and I definitely recommend people interested wait for a sale, but it's basically a simple, familiar comfort food for someone who grew up on playing JRPGs on the SNES and PS1, and who plays free amateur RPG Maker games for a lark. It has the same sort of feeling as an amateur developer's 3rd try, where it has at least some polish, but not the skill to make anything great, and the plot is at least MST3K treatment-worthy. In that sense, it's a Good-Bad Game, and if you're of that particular mindset, it's enjoyable... I'd just recommend not playing on the harder modes, since this game wouldn't be any fun if it were more of a grind.

+nice graphics
+autosave system
+positions of "restoreation points" in dungeons
- chain of QTE for the special attacks
-hard difficulty is already way too easy
-reused models
-towns are just a list of generic characters
-no expanation of keywords
-bad UI (mobile port?)
-grinding
-only 5 abilities / char
-while there are 7 combat commands, 99% of the time you are just using your skills

GYAHHHHHHH! I have been playing this for the last 3 nights, and I must say it feels weird to say the best thing about this game IS THE TITLE MUSIC!

This game is atrocious, the user interface is clunky, there's random slowdown, virtually nothing in the game poses any significant threat, the story is bare bones, and money and mp early game are scarce to come by. And that's just the start of it. There are so many things that could have been great about this game which they completely fail at on multiple occassions. The first of which is that pretty much all the gameplay is in dungeons with on the map encounters. HOWEVER, pretty much every room in the game has hallways so narrow that every encounter is unavoidable. This gets old fast. Then there's the fact that there's no world map travelling and towns are highly condensed. Everything feels cramped, and you don't get a sense you are exploring a world.

Then you have the gem system in which your characters gain abilities through, however it also sucks since Alphadia Genesis also had a gem system like this but there it worked 10 times better!

And then the entire story is done like a visual novel, however none of the characters emote, like AT ALL. It makes everyone feel bland, not to mention there's even less backstory here than in other KT games. Not to mention that even with some time looking over the antagonists, nothing they say makes any bloody sense even at the big reveals near the end of the game!

Needless to say AVOID THIS GAME!

First few screenshots did not make the best of impressions, but something about the game felt very appealing, so I bought it.
And I am happy I did.
All the best RPG ingredients are well mixed together into this really playable and enjoyable game.
From the technical perspective:
Autosave : Yes
Fast movement : No (but the default speed is quite fast, so I never feel like I need my party move faster)
Special battle combo : Yes (damage dealt is tremendous)
Puzzles: yes (simple, but funny)
Story: good (cut scenes are not too long, but informative enough to lie down the carpet of curiosity ahead of you)
XP, level up, items upgrade : Yes

Extras:
1) as you upgrade your main weapon, you can inject more gems in it and customize it as well make it stronger
2) You collect special points and can replace them for extra bonus items in main menu shop
3) similarly you can also collect special gems and later buy for them unique items (like a charm protecting you from all negative effects, poison, paralyze, seal.... btw, seal = you can't use skills)
4) skill have their own levels. Most skills have 5 levels (some do have less). Each time you use a skill, it does progress towards next level automatically. Same skill then allows you to to hit "all enemies" or it becomes more potent. When you skill has more level unlocked, each time you are going to use it, you can freely assign desired level -> to manage your mana consumption vs power)
5) dungeon maps are 2D with 3D window, which I find very interesting
6) enemies respawn each time you re-enter a dungeon floor -> excellent for farming
7) one skill allows you to get extra items from enemies, sometime such items, you would not get even after you beat them. This skill not only helps you get richer, but also are critical during completion of side quests (Sub quests).

Tags: PartyRPG/JRPG/Topdown&3rd P.
Additional Tags: Delete Local Content & Remove from Library

TLDR: Repetitive mini-dungeons and VN dialogue sections RPGMaker style grindfest with bland story. Heavy asset recycling. Small environments. Keyfetch corridor level design.

While the game's engine is refreshing from the typical RPGMaker, instead seemingly opting for some Unity Engine mobileport type game, the constant recycling of sprites, the constant trashmob fights and the bland dialogue is disappointing.

The game always follows the same sequence, you go from dungeon floor to dungeon floor, clear out pointless encounters, fight a boss, then you are bumped back to world map.

The towns and dungeons are accessed through a menu rather than an actually explorable open world. Itemization is limited with a few basic templates you can upgrade in a mostly linear fashion. Monsters only dropping consumables.

It is a shame that the entire game is so lackluster as the first person cam in the corner, the transition animations between combat and the map, and the animation work on the enemy sprites were nice to enjoy. But with the story and game mechanics and world and level design being so barebones it comes way short of being enough to be worthwhile.

Conclusion: The only reason I have managed to make it far enough to assemble all party members was because I had a podcast to listen to at the same time. The game is combat heavy, and was probably meant as a pick up for 15 minutes at a time, timewaster. Even at that it is outshined by the proper old final fantasy games that have been ported to mobile quite a long time ago now. Tears Revolude is very forgettable and not worth keeping around the library. Removing permanently for declutter.

i'm just gonna keep it concise for this one; tears revolude is not good. here's why:

- dull, very skippable story with one-dimensional characters and stilted dialogue
- extremely basic combat system
- broken special ability mechanic that you can literally oneshot the final boss with
- lazily-designed dungeons with narrow corridors, annoying enemy placement and tedious puzzle-solving
- towns are presented as menus and not actually explorable areas
- irrelevant map rotation and first-person view gimmick
- repetitive music
- missing intro movie and voice acting from the mobile version

+ short runtime (can be beaten in about 6 hours blind), and can be played in bite-sized chunks due to the frequent autosave
+ in-game achievements add a bit of replay value
+ decent enemy sprites and animation

i'm actually somewhat of a kemco fan; i own pretty much all their games on mobile and buy them as soon as they release (i even own this one on mobile). however, this just misses the mark and can't be recommended under most, if not, all circumstances. 4/10